Thanksgiving rolls

And this one is even older; we made these rolls for Thanksgiving. But it's such a pretty picture that I felt the need to post the recipe. I wanted some dinner rolls, but I don't really like the bland, uniform, squishy rolls that most people consider dinner rolls. I remember loving four-leaf clover rolls back in the day, so searched for a recipe, and then realized that I didn't have enough muffin tins to make four-leaf clover rolls, so just made balls and let them rise in a cake pan. It worked, and the rolls were quite delicious - crusty on the top, delicate and almost sweet on the inside, and perfect for mopping up bits of gravy and whatnot.

I used this recipe, although I'll repost below. I mostly stayed true to the recipe... as true as I ever stay.

Thanksgiving dinner rolls

Made 24 rolls

1/2C warm water

1tsp sugar

2 tbs yeast

3/4C warm milk

2 tbs melted butter

1/4C sugar

1.5tsp salt

2 whole eggs

4C flour

1 egg yolk, for brushing.

Put the water, the teaspoon of sugar, and the yeast together in a big bowl. Let that sit for 5min or so, and then add the other liquid things and sugar. Add the flour one cup at a time; after the first cup add the salt. When the dough gets too stiff to stir, dump it out on a floured table and knead until smooth, about 5-10min. Then put it back in a bowl (preferably a clean, greased one), and let it rise about an hour, until doubled in bulk.

After an hour, dump the dough back onto a floured surface, and divide into 24 equal-sized chunks. Grease two round cake tins, and roll each chunk of dough into a ball. Place the balls in the cake pans at equal intervals. They probably won't be touching each other - that's fine, because they'll expand as they rise. Let them rise again for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 400F. Mix the egg yolk with 2tsp of water, and brush the wash gently over the now-risen rolls. Cook for 10-15min, checking occasionally and removing them when they're golden-brown.

These tasted best on the same day they were made, but I just re-warmed them in the oven (400F for 10min) the following day (Thanksgiving), and they were pretty tasty.

Cauliflower mac and cheese

I guess I have a bit of a backlog here of photos I took of tasty food - this one is from after I got back from Rumford with the team. I had volunteered to Peter that I take some of the leftover food (we had lots), and he was thrilled, so packed me up four shopping bags worth of leftovers. Luckily, skiers eat relatively healthily, and it's all food that I like, but I now have like five bags of apples in the bottom of my fridge, and none of them are crispy enough for my tastes when it comes to eating raw apples. I'm whittling them down by putting an apple in my oatmeal every day.

We also now are in possession of the largest hunk of cheddar cheese I've ever seen, as well as four packs of english muffins, a 3lb box of macaroni, and three big tubs of yogurt. The yogurt I can use up on the oatmeal with the apples, but for the cheese and macaroni, well, there's only one solution there - mac 'n' cheese! I decided that I wanted to make this semi-healthy, so put a cauliflower in it, like this recipe.

The end result was pretty good, but given that it made a whole pan, we're still slowly working on the leftovers. The topping was ground up english muffins and more cheese, and I doubled the amount of cheese in the actual recipe - 1/2C is not enough for a full pan of this stuff! But the cauliflower was a good idea, and it got a passable Ed-rating. I think we also added some garlic, and some chopped up ancho chile, just for more flavor.

I'd recommend this - tasty, filling, and even has vegetables in it.

Chicken Tangine

For Christmas, Ed got me a whole bunch of spices. Some of them were just normal spices, since we'd been running out anyway, but some were new and exciting! We now have things like Za'atar, preserved lemons, ancho chiles, two kinds of curry powders, whole vanilla beans, mustard seeds, tarragon... the list goes on. Anyway, having all sorts of exciting spices makes me want to try out all sorts of new and exciting dishes, and the preserved lemons put chicken tangine into my head as something to try. It ended up being absolutely delicious, although I shouldn't have doubled every spice in the recipe... it didn't look flavorful enough, but yeah, I overdid it a bit. The recipe below has the original amount of spices.

Chicken Tangine

Made enough for five

1 pack of chicken legs (8 legs?)

1 bunch of collard greens

Olive oil, as needed

1 red onion

2 tbs minced fresh ginger

5 cloves minced fresh garlic

1 preserved lemon

2" piece of cinnamon

2 tsp smoked paprika

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

2C stock

4 whole green cardamom pods

2 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste

1/2 tsp grains of paradise (or black pepper)

1/4tsp ground turmeric

1/4tsp ground nutmet

1/4tsp ground cinnamon

Preheat your oven to 325F.

In a heavy dutch oven type dish, heat the olive oil and start browning the chicken legs. I took off all the skin, first. In a separate frying pan, begin to sweat the onions in some olive oil and a little salt, with the stick of cinnamon. You could use the dutch oven for everything, to cut down on dishes, but that would have taken too long.

Onions in.

10-15min later, they were getting nicely caramelized.

Toast the ground spices, and ginger and garlic, in either the dutch oven or frying pan, whichever has finished its task of browning things first. Toast the spices for 5 minutes or so, and then add the chicken back in and toss everything around to coat.

Add the collards (rinsed and chopped), and the preserved lemon, and then cover with stock. If that isn't enough liquid, add more water, until the chicken is mostly covered. Bring everything to a simmer in the dutch oven, and cook for 3-4 minutes, and then transfer to the oven for 1-1.5hrs. The liquid will reduce, and the meat will fall off the bones. It is utter deliciousness. Let it rest for 10 minutes, try to find the piece of cinnamon and the cardamom pods, and serve over rice.

Belgian Waffles

We wanted waffles this morning, or at least, Ed thought that maybe if I made waffles, he would get his butt out of bed faster, but it didn't really work too well. Maybe part of that is my fault, because I wanted Belgian waffles, and that is a slightly more complicated recipe than the usual King Arthur Flour pancake recipe I use. This one uses yeast, and beaten egg whites, and I thought it was pretty tasty - nice and crispy on the outside, but moist and delicious on the inside.

But, but... why is all the coffee gone?

First you mix up all the dough bits, then you whip the egg whites, and fold them in. Then let it sit for 20min or so, and then you cook them!

Belgian Waffles

Made 7 waffles

1/2C warm water

3/4tsp yeast

1/2tsp sugar

1/2C milk

1 egg, separated

1 tsp vanilla

2 tbs melted butter

1/4tsp salt

1.5C sifted flour

1 tbs sugar

Put the warm water, yeast, and 1/2tsp sugar into a bowl. Dump in the milk, egg yolk, vanilla, butter, salt, and flour. Beat the egg white to a soft peak, and fold into the batter. Let it sit for 20 minutes, and then cook on a waffle iron.

Before egg whites.

After egg whites.

mmmmm.

Chocolate lava cake

I wanted to make a chocolate lava cake the other day, but we don't have little soufflé moulds, so I just made one cake, in our smallest pyrex bowl. It was really delicious, and got a full-star Ed-rating. As pictured below.

Luckily, I saved the cake from Ed before he actually took a bite out. I highly recommend making this.

• Chocolate lava cake
• The recipe is from here, the NYT molten chocolate magic. I cut it in half.
• 
  
• 1/4C butter (half a stick)
• 2 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2Tbs sugar
• 1tsp flour

Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler. As it melts, beat together the egg and egg yolk and sugar. Let the chocolate cool just enough so it won't cook the eggs, and then mix it in. Beat in the flour, until just combined.

Butter the mold, and dust it with cocoa powder. Pour in the batter. Cook at 450 for 8 minutes, until it is just set.

Invert the mold, dump the cake on a plate, and dust with powdered sugar. Feel free to garnish with raspberries and whipped cream =)

Popovers, update

So, we figured out a great popover recipe over last winter, but we've been tweaking. Basically, they weren't always rising as high as we thought they should be rising, and after adjusting every variable in the equation, I finally stumbled upon the reason. The ingredients just have to be warm enough. Also, you can't beat the batter too much, or you'll work the flour too much and it'll be all smooth and bread-like and not at all shaggy and rough like it should be.

The original recipe, which I'll retype below just for ease of use, is still a winner. These are pretty much my favorite bready thing to go along with dinner, and I think Ed's too.

Popovers

2 eggs, beaten

1 tbs butter

1C milk

1C flour

1 big pinch of kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 425F. Grease 8 muffin tins really well. Melt the butter in the microwave. Add the milk. Put that in the microwave too, until it's warm to the touch. Add the eggs, and whisk this mixture really, really, thoroughly.

Basically, you want the ingredients to be warm, so that when the popovers hit the very-hot oven, all the oven's heat will go into puffing them up, not into warming up the batter. You want the eggs very well whisked, because they're most of what provide the structure for the puffing action.

Add the flour and the salt to the liquids. Whisk to combine. Pour the batter into the greased muffin tins, 3/4-all the way full.

Cook at 425 for 15 minutes, without opening the oven door. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 350 and cook another 20 minutes. Consume!

Puffy, golden, shaggy, and delicious.

Look at all that custard-y hole-y goodness! Yummm.

Also, the meal shown with these delicious morsels was a turkey, white bean, kale soup. With caramelized onions and lots of garlic. That was also tasty.

Gingerbread latte

The other day, after some really fun orienteering training, Becky suggested that we stop by a Starbucks that was just around the corner from the park we were in. I think she used some excuse like "hot chocolate is a great recovery food", but I don't need much convincing when it comes to hot sweet drinks after a run. Anyway, I was all set to get a hot chocolate, when I saw the gingerbread latte on the board. I've never actually had one of those seasonal drinks from Starbucks, normally I don't go in there for anything other than a refill of my coffee mug, but I figured hey, if Becky says it's good, I may as well try it.

Holy crap! Those things are amazing! No wonder the world is addicted to $4 seasonal coffees!

Becky has no idea the damage she has wrought. Not only has she introduced me to something delicious, but she introduced me to something delicious that is too expensive for my budget, and that is only available part of the year. This is Not Good.

Luckily, I'm not the only person with this dilemma. I found this site. I made their gingerbread latte, with a couple tweaks, and it was delicious. Crisis averted! Now I can have my very own 300-calorie coffee drinks whenever I want one! Making an entire latte is probably too much work for an average morning, but I do think the syrup will be good just in normal coffee.

No Ed-rating for this, although maybe he'll try it in hot chocolate. He'll probably just turn up his nose, though, he thinks addictions are for wusses.

Gingerbread syrup
2C water
1.5C sugar
2 tsp molasses
2-1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp peppercorns
1 tsp whole cloves

(Yes, I use imitation vanilla. It tastes fine)

Put everything in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring somewhat continuously. After 10min, I tasted it, and decided that it was as spicy as I liked it, so I strained the syrup through a strainer into a measuring cup. Then I put it back in the pot, sans peppercorns and cloves, and continued to simmer for another 10 minutes, until the liquid ran off the spoon in a continuous stream, rather than in drops. It made just about two cups of liquid, so I put most of it in canning jars and just let them seal themselves.

The result is a sweet, spicy, flavorful syrup. Most delicious! Maybe it isn't exactly what you get at Starbucks, but it was a helluva lot cheaper, and tastes good enough to do the trick when I'm craving a $4 fancy coffee.

It made a really dark syrup. I'm going to pretend that makes it even more delicious. To make the latte, I microwaved ~1/2C of 2% milk until it was foamy, poured in the coffee, and then added probably 2tbs of syrup. Whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon completed the fruity tooty drink!

And of course, then came the test- is it possible to whip just two tablespoons of heavy cream? The answer is: barely. And it makes a mess.